Roger Goodell

Morning Docket: 01.18.13

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* “The bottom line is … I’m the 800-pound-gorilla that you want to settle with.” By the way, if you weren’t sure, Howrey’s trustee Allan Diamond wasn’t kidding about suing the firm’s former partners. “Either we’re going to cut deals, or I’m suing you.” [Am Law Daily]

* It takes two to do the partnership tango: in the expansion of its Financial Institutions Group, Goodwin Procter picked up Brynn Peltz, an attorney with more than 20 years’ experience, and an ex-partner at Latham and Clifford Chance. [Fort Mill Times]

* Hello, predictive coding! Goodbye, jobs! Not only can computers do the work of lawyers on the cheap, but they can do it more intelligently, too. Get ready to welcome our new digital overlords. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* Another day, another op-ed article about the law school crisis in the pages of the New York Times. But at least this one is about something most can support: changing the third year of law school. [New York Times]

* As it turns out, with 82 applications for the program’s first five spots, there’s actually a demand for Yale Law’s Ph.D. in Law. So much for this being “[t]he worst idea in the history of legal education.” [National Law Journal]

* Linebacker Jonathan Vilma’s defamation suit against NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in connection with Bountygate was dismissed. Wonder when Goodell will suspend Vilma for thinking he could win. [Bloomberg]

* Francis Lorson, former chief deputy clerk of the Supreme Court, RIP. [Blog of Legal Times]

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Pushed Off the Team, This Coaching Career Is About to Die

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Mirroring the profession it covers, this website has whiplashed from ecstasy to agony since its inception, from bottles and models to pink slips and loan debt. Like a rap career in reverse, the site has gone from frivolity to gritty realism in the time it took the legal market to absolutely crater. And that’s okay, really. Train wrecks can be beautiful. Like a pictorial essay of Detroit. The idea behind this column was to talk about a world immune from such harrowing turns of event. To talk about a world filled with Peter Pan syndromes who won the genetic lottery and behave as if what is owed to them is much more than just the world. You know, like young Biglaw attorneys circa 2006.

But this hasn’t been the case, sadly. This space has been the province of pedophiles and et cetera and so forth, and I’ve gotten to cover none of the Entourage-like excess that I had hoped. Today? Today we have another unemployed lawyer. Another statistic. Another godforsaken down-in-the-mouth sad sack who can’t keep a job and makes me want to cry because if he can’t keep his job, what does that foretell for my own “career” if you can even call it that — because I really can’t, I mean, why did I even go to law school in the first place? Good God and baby Jesus, was that a mistake…

This guy’s a football coach with a J.D. from Harvard. Let’s talk sports….

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Ed Hochuli Edition

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Ed. note: This new column is about sports and the law. You can read the introductory installment here.

Do you remember what you wrote on your law school application essay? I do. Since I knew (and know) next-to-nothing about the law, I chose to focus the theme of my essay on issues of justice and how my childhood and young adulthood had been shaped by a sort of visceral response to injustice that practically forced my hand. That literally compelled me to learn more about the law so that I could fight injustice like some fey Batman, ridding the world of evil. I must have spent days puzzling over what in my life’s experience could be offered up as proof of my worthiness to study the law. Truthfully, I couldn’t think of a single thing in my childhood that was weighty enough for this most holy of callings. A midwestern, middle class, middle-of-the-pack upbringing had left me woefully unprepared for this self-selected mission.

And so it was that a white kid from Kansas decided to say that he was drawn to the law because of the Spike Lee joint, Do the Right Thing. I might have even mentioned that I cried when Radio Raheem was murdered by New York City cops. That the feeling I had while watching a movie as a child was a clarion call to justice. That the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards my admittance to a T14 law school.

This is all to say that several years from now, some idiot very much like your humble correspondent might mention the injustice of the Seattle Seahawks victory Monday over the Green Bay Packers as the moment when he decided to go to law school.

Let’s talk sports, referees, and four-fingered rings that say LOVE and HATE.

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Collusion And The Latest Attempt To See If The NFL Is Subject To Laws

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The National Football League seems to be an unstoppable force of nature, led by a commissioner, Roger Goodell, who has managed to collectively bargain his way into being judge, jury, and executioner of league policy. NFL players often have to go outside of league offices and to United States courts to have their grievances heard, except that the NFL is just as indomitable in court as it is everywhere else.

But if you are going to defeat the NFL in court, claiming collusion is a better bet than most. The NFL has been busted for it before. And it’s really not that hard to infer when 32 or so owners get together to make a market crushing deal….

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